This post builds on the last post which was about strengths. I believe we all have natural abilities that can be developed into strengths if we are willing to invest the necessary time, resources and effort. I would like to examine strengths and weaknesses through two lenses and discuss a key difference between them. These two lenses are competence and character.
A lot of people fail to maximise their strengths because (a) they don’t know their strengths and (b) they erroneously believe that their strengths will take care of themselves and focus their attention on their weaknesses. The late Peter Drucker stated that a person can only perform from a position of strength. One can’t build performance on weaknesses, let alone on something one can’t do at all. He argued that you should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. This is because it usually takes far more energy and effort to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
Indianapolis Colts is the worst team in the NFL and the Green Bay Packers is the league’s best team. The Colts are on a losing streak while Green Bay is undefeated this season. But why is one team flying high and the other caught in a death spiral? I believe that there are two reasons for this:
If you are not into American Football, you have probably never heard of Tim Tebow. He is the most talked about player in the National Football League at the moment. This is because he is winning with his team, the Denver Broncos. Critics, however, argue that he is winning the wrong way.
Ibn Yamin Faryumadi (1286-1368), Persian poet, stated that there are four types of men:
(1) The man who knows and knows that he knows… This is a man of knowledge; strive to know him because you can learn from him.
(2) The man who knows, but doesn’t know that he knows… This is a man who’s unaware, so bring it to his attention.
I recently read a book on Creativity by Herbert Myers and Richard Gerstman in which they profiled 20 creative individuals. I was particularly intrigued by one of the profiles, Edward Albee, a famous American playwright’s observation on creativity.
Albee said that “many people in the world have the same experiences, depending upon their intelligence, their sensitivity, and their willingness to pay attention to what is going on. The only thing that separates the creative from the non-creative is the fact that creative people are not content to merely have the experience, but insist on commenting on it”.
A person of excellence is a problem solver. Excellent people have identified their niche in their fields and developed their expertise to solve problems better than their peers. Life is all about problem solving and everyone wants people who can help them solve their problems.
An employee is hired and paid to solve problems. This is his primary purpose and the moment he stops fulfilling that purpose is the moment he gets fired. You are attracted to people who can help you solve your problems and likewise avoid those who create problems for you.
To stand out in life you have to live a life of excellence. The world is drawn to excellent men and women. We study them to learn the secrets of their performance. What made Steve Jobs tick? What separates Messi from his peers?
I believe that excellence speaks. You attain excellence when the result or quality of your work speaks on your behalf instead of your mouth. You can blow your trumpet till you are blue in the face but at the end of the day, you still have to deliver the results. You will be judged and rewarded on the basis of the results of your work.
It is amazing how quickly the year has gone. We are already in mid-October and 2012 is just around the corner. I set several goals and targets at the start of the year and I have had my share of struggles and successes in accomplishing them. The cause of most of my struggles has been procrastination. I have put off tackling things that would have helped me accomplish certain goals. I find that I don’t struggle with activities or goals that have urgent deadlines but it is the goals with open-ended time frames that I struggle with.
Image by Cog Log Lab (c)
Steve Jobs, the former CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc, died of pancreatic cancer on Wednesday at the age of 56. There has been an outpouring of grief and sadness at the demise of a man widely regarded as a charismatic and creative genius. All Jobs wanted to do was create insanely great products and in the process he changed the world of technology. A visionary and game changer who transformed several industries (computing, music, film, mobile etc) by reinventing what already existed.